Husk Power: Scaling the Venture

Benjamin N. Roth; Joseph B. Lassiter III; Natalia  Rigol

Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2018

Husk Power: Scaling the Venture

by Benjamin N. Roth, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Natalia Rigol

Abstract

In January 2018, Husk Power had just raised $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste (primarily rice husk from rice mills) plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread across 350 villages in India and Africa.
By 2015, Husk underwent a major pivot. Rather than a rural electrification vision aimed at providing power to rural households through biomass gasification alone, Sinha envisioned plants organized around village commercial customers that used biomass gasification, solar energy, and battery power in tandem, allowing for power generation nearly 24-7. To bring this vision to reality, Sinha ceased operations of nearly all of the existing plant locations and began the conversion to new locations built around the “new” hybrid plant. Thus in 2015, Husk was operating a mere 10 power plants and serving roughly 2,000 customers, down from the 80 plants and roughly 250,000 customers they had prior to this shift.
After downsizing and reorganizing operations, was Husk Power once again ready to scale?

Keywords: scaling; Energy; Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Growth and Development; Energy Industry; India;

Language: English

Format: Print

25 pages

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Citation:

Roth, Benjamin N., Joseph B. Lassiter III, and Natalia Rigol. "Husk Power: Scaling the Venture." Harvard Business School Case 819-069, December 2018.

Microcredit and other forms of small-scale ﬁnance have failed to catalyze entrepreneurship in developing countries. In these credit markets, borrowers and lenders often bargain over not only the division of surplus but also contractual ﬂexibility. We show these lending relationships may lead to endogenous poverty traps for poor borrowers if future income is not pledgeable, yet richer borrowers unambiguously beneﬁt. Improving the bargaining position of rich borrowers can harm poor borrowers, as the lender tightens restrictions and prevents them from growing. The theory rationalizes the low average impact and low demand of microﬁnance despite its high impact on larger businesses.

Working Paper | 2019

On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Affects Labor Supply and Gender Norms

Natalia Rigol, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Simone Schaner and Charity Troyer-Moore

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into these accounts or into the male household head’s account (the status quo). Women in a random subset of villages were also trained on account use. In the short run, relative to women just offered bank accounts, those who also received direct deposit and training increased their labor supply in the public and private sectors. In the long run, gender norms liberalized: women who received direct deposit and training became more accepting of female work, and their husbands perceived fewer social costs to having a wife who works. These effects were concentrated in households with otherwise lower levels of, and stronger norms against, female work. Women in these households also worked more in the long run and became more empowered. These patterns are consistent with models of household decision-making in which increases in bargaining power from greater control over income interact with, and influence, gender norms.

Keywords: gender norms; Economics; Gender; Employment; Income; Societal Protocols; India;

Citation:

Rigol, Natalia, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Simone Schaner, and Charity Troyer-Moore. "On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Affects Labor Supply and Gender Norms." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 26294, September 2019. View Details

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A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of households in dire circumstances as well as for setting appropriate consumer protection policies. We conduct a simple experiment in three sites in which we paid off high-interest moneylender debt of individuals. Most borrowers returned to debt within six weeks. One to two years after intervention, treatment individuals were borrowing at the same rate as control households.

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Husk Power: Scaling the Venture

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